In addition to being a member of the national team and a professional road cyclist, Catlin was pursuing a degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford. The Minnesota native had earned an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and Chinese from the University of Minnesota, and also excelled as an artist and violinist.

“[She was] a really special person — kind, funny, empathetic, and talented at literally everything she did,” her sister, Christine, wrote in an email to the paper. “She just felt like she couldn’t say no to everything that was asked of her and this was her only escape.”

Catlin, who previously attempted suicide in January, hadn’t been the same since suffering two crashes, according to her family. The first came in October, resulting in a broken arm. The next occurred in December, leaving her with a concussion and creating what her father, Mark, described as a “perfect storm,” which included a rapid heart rate that had recently prevented her from training.

“She was not the Kelly that we knew,” Mark said. “She spoke like a robot. We could get her to talk, but we wondered, ‘What has happened to our Kelly?’ … Everything was open to her, but somehow her thinking was changed and she couldn’t see beyond, I guess, her depression. After her concussion, she started embracing nihilism. Life was meaningless. There was no purpose. This was a person with depression. For her, she could no longer concentrate on her studies or train as hard. She couldn’t fulfill what she felt were her obligations to herself, she couldn’t live up to her own standards. She couldn’t realize that what she needed to do was get away and rest, heal. We were all searching for the magic words, that life was worth living.”

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Catlin wrote a lengthy email to her family in January, relaying “dark” and “suicidal” thoughts,” prompting the family to call the police, who “got there in time to save her that time,” according to Christine.

Catlin entered treatment and convinced her family that she was making progress.

“What killed her was her own stubborn determination. She had to win at everything,” said her brother, Colin. “She got this idea [about suicide], which may have been related to her concussion. Just a week or two ago, we were making plans and I was optimistic about her future. She did have plans for the future, it turned out. Her plans.”

Less than a month ago, Catlin wrote a blog for VeloNews in which she described the difficulty in managing her passions.

“Being a graduate student, track cyclist, and professional road cyclist can instead feel like I need to time-travel to get everything done,” she wrote. “… Most of the time, I don’t make everything work. It’s like juggling with knives, but I really am dropping a lot of them. It’s just that most of them hit the floor and not me.”